The gaming industry, including casino-based games, Internet-based gaming sites, and lottery-based games, is growing as a source of consumer entertainment and revenue generation for local jurisdictions. Lottery games in particular have become a time honored method of raising revenue for state and federal governments the world over. Traditional scratch-off and on-line games have evolved over decades, supplying increasing revenue year after year. However, the lottery industry must continuously evolve with changes in technology, player preferences, and so forth, to introduce new and entertaining games in order to sustain or increase the revenue stream. For example, as the Internet has grown into a daily household means of communication, information source, entertainment, and the like, various examples of Internet-enabled lottery games have been proposed, including multi-player games. For example, published U.S. patent application Ser. No. 13/223,628 entitled Method for Implementing a Digital Gate Enabled Multi-Player Lottery Game describes an Internet-enabled lottery game wherein players are provided lottery tickets that include a code for entry into a multi-player network via the Internet, the plurality of players combining their respective entries to complete a multi-player game, such as a puzzle. Upon successful conclusion of the multi-player game, the consumers are awarded a prize.
The Internet has also greatly enhanced the availability and ease of providing digital media to the consuming public, such digital media including, for example, music, movies, videos, video games, and the like. Consumers can shop for and download movies/videos, games, and music/songs from any number of well-known websites offering such services. Even big-box retailers are now offering music and video downloads to customers via the Internet. As the character and nature of digital medial dissemination changes and grows, the gaming industry is presented with a prime opportunity for growth by integrating game products with the sale and dissemination of such digital media.
Accordingly, the gaming industry would welcome a method for offering game products in a new and entertaining way to a broad base of potential players via integration of such products with the sale and dissemination of conventional digital media.